Don't Look Under the Bed: Full Tilt Boogie
by Broken Blade
Summary: A shadow from the past arises in the night, shattering the peace of the town of Middleberg and wreaking havoc on its citizens. With the help of two powerful allies, Frances Bacon McCausland must free her mind and summon all of her strength to defeat this malicious evil before it destroys her family and her life.
1. Chapter 1: Wake Up, Franny

Chapter 1 – Wake up, Franny.

_ Middleberg is a middle-size town in the middle of the country. But sometimes…in my dreams…it felt like someplace else—somehow familiar, but also very strange. Middleberg is where I live, and so does something…else. Some people thought Middleberg was dull, that nothing ever happened here. Well, they were very wrong._

* * *

Even in a place like Middleberg, nestled safely in the bosom of the American Dream, between the big city lights and gritty urban decay, a dark cloud of corruption could suffuse the air, moving like a thunderhead over acres of perfect little white houses with emerald green lawns. It could settle in an oily film over the banal tedium of suburban life to spread its corrosive bile.

On an otherwise lovely night in the picturesque metropolis, such a cloud floated above the town square, obscuring the twinkling stars overhead. The trees of the square—Black Maple, River Birch, Hickory, Sweet Gum, Buckeye, Dogwood and Ash—all bent beneath the weight of the darkness as it drifted toward the great Middleberg town hall and the clock tower, Old Henry, so named for Henry Oldfellow Middle, the town's founder.

The statues of children below, frozen forever in their bronze prison, stared on with their eternal gaze as the gargantuan iron hands of the clock began to spin out of time, faster and faster of an accord not their own. No person, not one all night shopkeeper or third shift truck driver, would notice the hands gliding over the dial's face or hear the bloodcurdling squeal of the grinding gears within.

The target was not the skeletal buildings of concrete and steel, stuffed with faux-wood desks and stacked story upon story with reflective blocks of floor-to-ceiling glass. No, it was beyond the city, outwards, where the lines of the Transit Express came to a halt, the only way forward being back. Its reign would be where terror was served best, a pocket of the suburban sprawl of middle-America, where children played dangerously in the street away from the lazy eye of the nanny and aging mothers past their prime suffered from empty-nest syndrome with designer wine glasses cradled in their bony hands. Other demons had and always would be present, but of an entirely different kind.

As the time stood, those very captives lay in their beds dreaming Ambien dreams, unaware of that dark cloud rolling across the starry sky, ever closer. In Middleberg, all was quiet and unassuming as its denizens slept a fragile sleep—one that would be disturbed all too soon.

For darkness travels quickly.

* * *

Across town in a her family house, indistinguishable from any other in the neighborhood, snuggled deep in dry and comfy linens, Frances Bacon McCausland lay engaged in a bout of fitful sleep. Brow furrowed, her subconscious tore against the fragile fabric of the dream world, disturbed by a growing discomfort she did not comprehend.

Outside, the night which had been calm was now stirred by a forceful breeze that pushed flat the blades of grass in undulating waves of milky green.

"_Franny_."

A voice, barely audible, drifted along those shimmering waves, making the tips of tulips dry and brittle by its very command. It carried dead leaves and loose fragments of residential debris along the street in a frenzied cyclone of spinning candy wrappers and crumpled fast food receipts.

"_Wake up, Franny_."

Up against the two-door garage it rushed like a squall against a boarded seaside hut, eliciting tired groans under the weight of its onslaught. Tendrils like slender fingers pressed against every surface, used the elegant brick siding as a scratching pad, felt its way upward…upward…flooding into the gutters as it climbed.

Through the windows like frost on a winter night, along the corridors of cedar baseboards and vanilla crème carpet, flattened like a serpent to slide beneath the door until that dark cloud finally gathered into corporeal form and gazed at the girl with tousled red hair, asleep and oblivious in a world about to shatter forever.

She would be so easy to touch…so easy to destroy…but there was fun to be had, games to be played.

And vengeance—the greatest prize of all.

As the slender shadow drifted across the wall, the glowing red numbers on the bedside alarm clock began to speed up, ticking away the minutes like dominoes, out of sync with the flow of the night. One after another they melted into a new hour, and soon another in turn.

"_There's so much work to be done,_" the voice rasped. Bending down to close the space between cracked, grey lips and pale, delicate ear, whispering. "_Wake up, Franny. I want to play._"


	2. Chapter 2: Arrival

Chapter 2: Arrival

"Frances," a voice once again floated into her ear. "Frances, time to get up honey."

Karen McCausland stretched in the doorway of her daughter's bedroom, beckoning her to rise. Frances had never been difficult to awaken, and so her mother gave nothing further. As she turned and walked away without a second glance, she did not hear the young girl's strained whimpers.

Dreams were rarely pleasant experiences for Fran. The dream world was a world of chaos and lunacy, a world without logic, and that was her greatest nightmare. Perhaps it was because of this need for rationality and control that made her dreams so often caustic and frightening. Beyond the veil of sleep she found herself in a wasteland of fast moving shadows and iridescent eyes. Fragments of a shattered past jumped to awful, vibrant life in that place of mist and purple light.

Spinning in that mist, alone and afraid, Fran caught a glimpse of one of those fragments, turned hideous with time and embittered by its solitude, as it attacked her with ferocious speed.

"_Franny!_"

She awoke in the illusory safety of her bed, a thin sheen of sweat matting strands of red hair to her forehead. In her room it was quiet and calm, her treasured collection of childhood dolls partially illuminated by the light from the hallway. As she struggled against the heavy weight of exhaustion that pressed upon her, it occurred to her that she must have slept through her alarm. Sure enough, the red numbers at her bedside read the time at just after seven. It felt like the middle of the night. She was still so tired.

_Bad dreams_, she thought as she tossed the covers aside and moved to begin the day.

At once noticing the absence of early light through the blinds, she shuffled her bare feet across the room to the window and parted the slats to peer out. It could have been the middle of the night. No faint light broke the tops of the houses across the street, and the far horizon was still invisible, black against black. Leaves littered the asphalt outside, as if blown up by an approaching storm. The air was still, however, and no clouds appeared to be hanging in wait overhead.

Fran hoped it wouldn't rain. It was difficult enough to get a ride from her parents with their busy schedules, and she would do nearly anything to avoid riding the bus. The forecast called for a relatively clear and mild day, and one thing she couldn't stand was when the structure of the system failed her. There was no logical reason to worry, but she still couldn't shake the feeling that something was…off.

Downstairs, her father, a gentle but stern and burly bear of a man, frowned over the glass domed dial of a barometer hanging by the kitchen window, her mother at his back, prying open the blinds with two fingers. They were still dressed in their night clothes. Her older brother, Bert, leaned against the refrigerator in a heavy daze. Eyelids drooping, he looked as tired as Fran felt.

"It's so dark," her mother said, gazing out the window, eyes rolling back and forth across the stretch of sky from one end of the street to the other. She spoke in a tired drawl, her words slurring into a yawn, "Must be a storm front moving in."

Her father turned. "Not according to the barometer."

"Oh man," said Bert, "maybe it's the end of the world. It sure feels like it."

Frances pushed wavy red hair back behind her ears with a yawn. Already grumpy from her somnolent state, she couldn't help but feel a slight irritation at her brother's remark. Even in the sometimes pointless rabble of simple conversation she found herself bound by her own system of logic. It could be a hindrance and often times made her come off as somewhat snobbish. Though she didn't mean any malice, she couldn't help but give her brother a hard time.

"How would you know what the end of the world felt like?" she asked in a patronizing tone. "You've never felt it before, have you?"

Bert, too tired to care about his sister's childish condescension, let his head fall to the table, wishing he could trade the cold, hard wood for his pillow. "Maybe the clocks are wrong," he mumbled.

Fran's younger brother Darwin appeared from behind the kitchen island and hopped into her lap. "Hope springs eternal," he said, quoting Alexander Pope's 1732 composition "An Essay on Man." Frances, as intelligent as she was, was constantly in awe at her younger brother's impressive intellect. At times, she believed that he had it within him to be one of the greatest minds in history, greater than Kant and Voltaire, perhaps even superior in wit than Wilde and Twain. She imagined Darwin leading the world into a new age of enlightenment. He would need guidance, of course, and he would have to set aside childish pursuits in the interest of learning. That is where she believed her role came in, and in order to be a great leader, she must first focus her mind as well.

Her father checked his watch again, perplexed. "I always set our clocks by the Naval Observatory website. I'll check it out. Bert, trash, and don't forget the paper."

As she and her mother went about setting out the placemats for breakfast, Fran was struck by the sensation of being watched. Turning her head slightly, she used her peripheral vision to look out through the open blinds. Anyone walking at that dark time could easily gaze inside and see her sitting at the dining room table, but no one was there, on the sidewalk or in the street.

Behind her, Bert grumbled veiled curse words as he fumbled with the draw string trash bag, tying it into a loose knot and pulling it from the can.

"Hello?" Darwin said. "Earth to Frances."

Shaking away the cobwebs, Fran returned to herself. "What's up?"

"You were staring off into space. Where'd you go?"

"Nowhere. I just…nowhere."

Her father, back in the kitchen, looked even more troubled than before. "It's 4:23 AM," he said in his baritone voice.

Her mother looked up at the clock above the doorway. "The clocks say 7:23."

"The clocks are wrong."

Bert dropped the bag of trash on the table in front of his sister. "I told you. It's the end of the world."

Had Fran thought of a witty remark, she didn't have the time to say it before he slumped out of the kitchen and headed for the stairs.

Glancing over her shoulder to complain about Bert's rudeness, Fran felt a sense of concern. For while she was no doubt confused and intrigued, her mother looked lost suddenly, almost scared, as if this strange and illogical phenomenon haunted her like a poltergeist. She leaned into her husband's arms and he cradled her like a child. Frans parents were more tender to one another, however rarely, than they usually were in any other capacity except with Darwin. She herself had never known such comfort from them.

Upstairs again, the house below void of light, Frances tucked her younger brother back into bed and corrected the time on the clock in his room.

"Frances, why are the clocks wrong?"

Possible explanations pumped sluggishly through her still sleepy mind, but she settled for the simplicity of honest truth. "I don't know. I'm sure there's a logical explanation, though."

"Mom looked scared. Are you scared?"

"Of course not. There's nothing to be scared of. Now try to get back to sleep, okay?"

"Okay," he said with a yawn.

She turned to leave but his voice stopped her at the door. "Frances?"

She turned back. "Yeah?"

"Would you look under…never mind."

Fran tilted her head in sympathy. "I'll see you in a few hours," she said and walked out.

Like the rest of her family, she quickly retreated back to the warmth and safety of her bed, stopping only once more to look out her window at the dark morning outside. The thought of invisible eyes watching her out there sent a chill through her chest. The skin of her back tightened like cellophane and she quickly turned down the blinds once again. Like she had done at the age of five, she hurried into bed and wrapped herself in covers, trying to forget the feeling, trying not to think of hideous things that she knew didn't exist. The things that, if in some warped reality were truly real, would be lurking about in the shadows just outside her window, plotting and smiling and setting to work doing awful, terrible, wonderful things.

* * *

One with the shadows outside, across and down the street. Done now with childish games. They were like tickling an old lover when the flesh cried out for more. It was here for a reason. Chaos was the ideal, hate was the engine, and now fear would be the fuel to light the fire inside.

The Jepson's backyard. Behind the fence, the Jepson's dog—small, not yet fully grown. At the first foul scent it stood inside its doghouse, hackles raised against any approaching threat. Teeth bared, it growled it a tone just above a whisper.

A bone shaped dog biscuit dangled by a string from long, talon-tipped fingers.

Drawn by the promise of a late night snack, the small dog softened slightly and ventured out into the grass. It wrinkled its cold nose at the vulgar smell and sneezed once. Some deep, primal part of the pup told it to bark, to attack, to alert the master, but the strange creature was offering food, so it had to be nice.

The new friend swung the small treat like a pendulum before the dog's eyes, setting the tail wagging with excitement.

_ "Would you like a treat, little one?"_

The dog raised its ears, lowered its guard, and rushed forward to claim the offered morsel.

"_So would I!_"

The clawed hand flashed through the air and seized the animal by the neck. The trap was sprung and now the first domino had fallen. A seed of terror was about take root in that small, clean little world.

And as the deed was done, nobody heard a sound.

* * *

From the mountains, over the freeway and skimming the roofs of the business district, another strong wind blew through Middleberg, riding the cool asphalt of the main avenue and winding through the square until it rose up like a thermal, whipping through the hair of a lone figure standing atop the clock tower.

The figure looked out over Middleberg, at once taken by the twinkling lights and the silhouette of the distant mountains against the purple light of approaching dawn. It grasped the neck of a sharp spire and hung out from the structure, looking down and out, taking in the surroundings, analyzing. The beauty of the nightly vista was undeniable, but a sense of jaded disappointment prevailed.

"So this is the heartland, huh?" he said, surveying the hunting ground. "Guess it could be worse."

He spun once around the spire, his eyes never leaving the panorama as he swung. His scan of the horizon and the ground below finished, he slumped against the architecture and breathed a tired sigh.

"What in the world am I doing here?"

He could smell evil on the air the minute he arrived. It felt sticky and hung like the stink of sulfur from a smokestack. Leaning his head back against the cold stone, he closed his eyes and tasted the night. The thing had been there, no doubt causing some subtle mischief in those deep hours. Chasing the footprints of long gone phantoms and trying to reverse the damage play by play would be a futile and fruitless effort. He sat in stillness for a time, thinking, until opening his eyes and looking out once again at the metro. The damage here, however severe or minor, had been done.

The scent was leading away from the urban vestment, off toward meandering blocks of assembly line tract housing and small backyards of patio furniture and quaint, individual doghouses with imprinted plates that read things like Fido or Spike or Tiger. The chase would lead him out of the urban bustle and into the slow and steady rhythm of suburban life. A part of him felt it a shame as he looked down at the transit lines across which no boxcars slid in the silence of the night. It was a shame. He would have liked to have ridden the TRAX lines at least once.

Lethargy aside, his senses were slowly coming to life, waking from slumber as the denizens of Middleberg lay still and warm in theirs. A mobile target was hard enough to hit, impossible still while standing in place. It was time to move, the game was afoot.

Staring out like a gargoyle from his place on the tower's ledge, he whispered, "Where are you?"


	3. Chapter 3: A Crossing of Stars

Chapter 3 – A chance meeting, a crossing of stars

Beneath the lazy stillness of a sunny and mild morning, a troubled current of shock ran through the town of Middleberg. Clear skies and light winds from the east, said the weatherman, but he forgot to mention the cold front of weird and sinister. Mister Cornick, who lived on the next street, woke up late because he reset his alarm wrong, and upon waking immediately took his heart medicine. It wasn't until he was in the ambulance that the paramedic informed him that the contents of the prescription bottle looked like caffeine pills.

In another neighborhood, Mrs. Heller, a teacher at Middleberg High School, woke up to pins and needles in her feet—quite literally. The contents of her sewing kit were strewn across the floor by her bed, and the various implements stuck pointy side up from the carpet. Her screams caused her next-door neighbor to drop his mug of scalding hot coffee in his lap.

After the early morning confusion, Fran checked and double-checked to make sure everything was in order before walking out the door. Contrary to the habit of most girls her age, more attention was given to checking clocks and primping in front of the mirror. Her friend Joanne waited at the end of the driveway for her as usual, hoping to get Bert to give her the time of day. His response to her overt enthusiasm was usually a bored salutation as he drifted by, either oblivious or uncaring of her affections. Whichever way it went was largely irrelevant, for such things usually only made shallow teenage girls even more tenacious in their pursuits of misplaced attraction. Perhaps, with a different combination of eyeliner and lip-gloss or the gravity defying help of her new water bra, today would be the day.

"Hey, Joanne," Fran said as they met at the end of the driveway, books in hand.

"Hey," Joanne absently replied, still staring after Bert as he rode down the street on his bike.

Joanne was still in middle school, a year behind Fran in grade but not in age. Fran's intelligence and surface maturity had, at face value, been so acute as to persuade many of her teachers that she might be happier at a more advanced level. With the blessing of her parents, she was allowed to move ahead a grade. High school was a daunting experience for anyone, and should have been even more so for someone a year younger than everyone else. Fran, however, felt more in her element around older peers and in more advanced classes. It made her feel more like the adult she longed to be, free of the immaturity of post-adolescent middle-schoolers, but unfortunately surrounded by the distracting immaturity of high-schoolers. After all, teenagers were still teenagers.

Two houses down on the other side of the street, Mrs. Jepson stood in the shadow of her big house in her nightgown and slippers, wringing her hands anxiously. Even through her numerous facelifts, which made her expressions almost unreadable, the girls could see that she looked worried.

"Good Morning Mrs. Jepson," Fran called. It was not an everyday occurrence that either of them spoke to the woman. More often than not, they were watched with stone faces or bitter stares. The Jepsons were generally unpleasant and not favored in the neighborhood, but Fran was a courteous girl and wanted to show concern for a neighbor in distress.

"Have you girls seen Tolstoy?" Mrs. Jepson asked sharply. "He wasn't in the backyard when I went out this morning. I'm afraid something's happened to him."

"No, ma'am, we haven't seen him," Fran replied. "We'll look for him on the way to school."

"If you find him, bring him right back here immediately," Mrs. Jepson said and continued wringing the expensive moisturizer out of her hands as they walked by.

"Weird, huh?" Joanne said. "They never let that dog out of their sight."

"Yeah…weird, but dogs run off all the time. I'm sure he just got out through the fence."

"Maybe. Did I tell you our clocks went off three hours early this morning?"

"What?" Fran asked, suddenly unnerved.

"Yeah, it was so strange. All of them in the house."

"It happened at my house, too."

Joanne cocked her head to the side. "Wow, now that's really strange," she said. Well aware of Fran's particular disposition, she often relished any chance to present her friend with something unexplainable.

"Well, it's only strange because you don't have a logical explanation for it," Fran replied. They were her words coming out of her mouth, and they should have instilled a sense of comfort within her, but this day that comfort was nowhere to be found. The isolated incident was now a local occurrence, not restrained to the confines of a circuit breaker or a short in the wiring. If it had affected Joanne's house, it most surely had happened at other houses in the neighborhood. At what point did a strange happening turn into a widespread phenomenon?

"Oh no!" Joann cried.

Fran spun, checking their surroundings, though she didn't know why. "What is it?"

"I forgot my science project. I've got to go back and get it."

"Do you want me to go with you?"

"No that's okay, I don't want you to be late. Go on ahead. If I don't catch up, I'll see you later."

As her friend took off running down the street, Fran felt the urge to tell her to be careful. Not that there neighborhood or the town of Middleberg in general had ever been an unsafe place, but the events that had transpired that morning had set Fran on edge. Alone, she walked on, oddly not giving much thought to her own safety or what things might be out there…waiting.

X X X

It was out there…waiting.

The stench that carried him onward and inward to the guts of suburbia had settled over the land. Pinpointing a trail to track back to the source was now impossible. He was in the beast's haunting ground, and would therefore have to watch his back. The worst feeling was having to wait, it was a feeling of helplessness and need. As much as he didn't want anything bad to happen, he was forced to wait until it came out of hiding. But who was the predator and who was the prey? He existed now in the vital moments when that was yet to be seen.

His appearance was random, a drop in a pond.

Standing next to a shiny red stop sign at the corner of two pristine streets he stood when the girl with the orange hair came walking. It was a shot of pure luck that he caught her in the corner of his eye and instinct that drew him to her soft-spoken beauty. Normally, he didn't pay much attention to people and their meandering lives, even to attractive females. Their world was not his world, and the things that crowded the minds of mortal men were merely remnants in his own, but this girl in particular…caught him. Everything about her was understated, from the way she walked to the way her light skin, peppered with faint freckles, shine in the sun. Then there were her eyes, of deepest brown with hints of shining hazel, shimmering as she looked right through him. He looked to his side and behind, spying only empty street. Something had focused her gaze his way, but it was not—could not—be him. What then, was she staring at?

Fran, in all her confident awkwardness, could be both quiet and outgoing within the same ten minutes, though she was not generally considered by her teachers to be shy, especially by the standards most often applied to intelligent kids. She was bookish, yes, and modest, even demure in some ways. In the area of conversation, however, she was rather forthright. When she saw the unfamiliar boy standing on the corner, looking around in confusion, her curiosity was piqued. As a student of logic and science, Fran reasoned, satiating curiosity was just good sense. She slowed her walk as she approached, wondering if he would pay her any attention. She caught the corner of his eye and hooked his gaze. A moment of surprise passed between the two of them as he stared much longer than he expected. When he realized she was looking at something, he spun his head around but found that nothing was there.

She brushed a few stray strands of honey-fire hair behind her ear and said, "Hey, are you lost?"

He looked shocked that she had spoken to him. Fran didn't normally get that reaction from boys, and it sparked a side of her that didn't receive much stimuli. With a shake of his head, he broke free and tried to reply, but the words stuck in his throat. "No. I, uh…"

"Are you looking for the school?"

He was silent. Inside his head spun a million questions, theories, and possibilities.

"What's the matter? You see a boogie man, or are you just shy?"

"It's just…you can see me."

She took a step closer. "Umm, yeah. So?"

"I mean, you just…noticed me…is what I mean."

_Hard to believe_, she thought, and said, "Yeah, you're kind of hard to miss. You're the only other person on the sidewalk and you look pretty lost. Call me old-fashioned, but I thought I'd try to help." She offered a hand. "Hi. I'm Francis."

He was struck by a moment of indecision, unsure of whether or not to take it. A look of disappointment crossed her face as her hand began to fall back, and without thinking, he reached out quickly and lightly grasped her smooth, tender fingers. Her skin was soft and warm to the touch, instantly electrifying his senses. He smelled her then, a wonderful scent of berries and fresh linen. Unknown to them both but felt strongly enough just the same, a connection had been made.

"Ren," he said. "Nice to make your acquaintance."

She giggled slightly has he released her hand. To his surprise, he was almost reluctant to do so. "What?" he asked.

"Nothing, I've just never met anyone who talks like that."

"Hey, you said old-fashioned."

"Right, I guess I did. Well then, it's lovely to meet you, good sir. So, are you new in town?"

He turned his head, scanning the street again. "Yeah. Pretty much just got here."

"Cool. I live just up the street. I didn't know any houses were for sale around here."

"Yeah," he said, not knowing what else to say. Conversation was not a normal indulgence.

"So…what _are_ you doing?"

"Just taking a look around, getting familiar with the place."

Somewhat demurely, she shifted her gaze to the concrete. She ran the front edge of her shoe along a seam in the sidewalk. "Oh, well, you could…walk with me. If you want."

A smile began to form on his lips. By very nature he was rather avoidant, but was quite charmed by the pretty girl before him. Perhaps, in another life, he might have walked with her somewhere…anywhere. "I would, but I actually have some things to do, so I can't today. Thank you for the offer."

"Will I see you at school?"

"Yeah. I mean, no. I'm not enrolled yet so…maybe."

"Well, if not, maybe I'll see you around."

He nodded. "I'm sure you will."

Francis found herself giving him a mildly flirtatious smile before walking on. She'd never used her eyes in such a way, as if they were weapons she'd never thought to fire. She felt the distinct intuition that his own eyes were upon her as she reached the intersection.

"It was nice meeting you, Francis," he called.

_Do something_, a voice inside her head told her. _Anything!_

Throwing all caution and instinct to the wind, she readied her locked and loaded gaze and when she turned she made a note of flipping her hair into the approaching breeze. "It was nice to meet you, too. And you can call me Fran."

He watched her turn and walk away. The meeting had left a strange feeling that covered him like a heavy rain and didn't lift until she was gone. With the memory of her smile still lingering in his head, Ren reminded himself that he had a job to do. He was a fool to let himself get distracted.

"Well," he spoke to no one, "that was the dumbest thing I've done in a while."

But she _saw_ him—and without him allowing her to. In the universe in which he worked, it was every day he encountered one so old that possessed the sight. For Ren it was even more unique. Even _kids_ didn't normally see him. He was not like others. His cloak was very strong. She, however, saw him as clear as day. What did it mean? Perhaps nothing, but if she saw the_ other_, it could mean a great deal of trouble for her. And what if there was a connection between her and his task at hand? With no other trails to chase, he decided it would be best to stick close by. He would follow her down the rabbit hole, but only for a while, because getting caught up looking out for a mortal girl was the last thing he wanted to do.

"Damn," he said, unseen and unheard.

X X X

An idea does not have a consciousness. It does not regard where it came from or where it is going. It merely exists until, infused with intelligent energy, it gathers a life force of its own. Even imbued with such power, however, an idea is not corporeal. It acts through human will, influencing action and thought, but it does not move or speak on its own.

Larry was, at one point before his inception, an idea like any other. His life force sprung from a need, a gentle type of necessity experienced most profoundly in the hearts of lonely people. The terms of his current freedom were predicated by the unexplained absence of this necessity, but as a being unaware of the absurdity of his own sentience, he gave it no great moment of thought. He did not think about how he got there, nor where he was before or where he would be at any other time after. He existed solely in the moment, relaxing on a warm stretch of rock in a sea of green grass. The sole inhabitant of his own stone isle, he basked in the glowing rays of the sun and watched a world go by that he had no care to be a part of. Had someone seen him there and witnessed the smirk of self-satisfaction and carelessness upon his face, they might think him a slacker or troublemaker up to some kind of no good.

But no one saw him. His world was as intangible to others as ours is intangible to him, and comfortably in this dome of invisible existence he watched he girls pass to and fro before him like display line all for his pleasure. Blondes, brunettes, redheads, girls in jeans and girls in skirts and girls in low cut tops and high heels and flats and Keds and Converse. Those girls, however, might as well have been as unseen and untouchable as he.

But the girl that caught his eye…she was tangible…she was as real as the smile on her face and the fire in her hair. Something about her was so…familiar, yet he was sure he'd never seen her before. For someone without a physical form, Larry was quite amorous. Had he attended high school in another era he may have even been referred to as a bit of a horndog, but definitely a ladies' man.

Sitting up on the rock, he couldn't help but smile as the girl walked back, books held to her chest like precious treasures. Maybe he would mess with her; whisper something surprising in her ear or tap her on the shoulder just to see her cute nose wrinkled in confusion. He had always been slightly mischievous like that. After all, there was nothing wrong with a little fun.

…but something was off. It caught him like a punch in the face, a whiff of something…unnatural…and a sound as well, carrying on the wind like a witch's cackle on All Hallow's Eve. Larry looked around but saw no sign of wrongdoing. Still, something bad was lurking, somewhere, maybe even just around the corner. He thought he might fare better with a slight change of perspective. Craning his neck, he looked up at the towering building before him. The stark colorless silhouette imposed against the azure sky looked anything but welcoming.

X X X

Middleberg High School was a three-story affair of smooth brick stacked line upon line in the shade of circus peanut orange. The main building and its adjacent field house annex were a mix of post-modern simplicity and nearly medieval decoration. Against the sky, the staggered merlons and crenels were reminiscent of old-style battlements, jack-o-lantern teeth…or the roof of a White Castle. Fran had never given much thought to the notion that there might be just as much junk inside her school as within a fast food joint. Her confidence in the establishment was complete and unbroken. Her faith in a secular system built upon learning and driven by punishment and reward was infallible. It was logical. It was solid. Fran needed that.

One thing she had never needed was the attention of boys, but on that day it seemed as though she had activated some beacon inside of her that was sending off signals she couldn't control. First, there had been the still lingering meeting with Ren on the street corner, which she'd played over and over in her mind the entire walk to school, and now another boy she had never seen was shooting eyes her way. She first spotted them as she and Joanna approached the front entrance of the school. He was sitting back on one of the large landscaping boulders in front of the main building. He had neither books nor bag, and everything about him cried out t-r-o-u-b-l-e. Fran didn't fall for such immaturity, but still, a cute guy was a cute guy, and she blushed as she turned her back to his wry smile.

"Who's that guy?" she asked Joanne.

"What guy?"

"That guy over there staring at us. I've never seen him before, have you?"

Joanne looked at her as if she had a painted face and giant red shoes. "What are you talking about?"

"That guy right over—" she whipped her head around but saw that where the onlooker had previously sat, there was only rocks and flowers and nothing more. "He was right there just a second ago."

"Are you feeling okay, Francis?"

Fran was slightly irritated by the condescending tone, but shrugged it off. "Of course I am. He must've ran off."

"Like you would have talked to him anyway."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Fran asked.

"It means you don't talk to guys."

"Yes I do. I'll have you know I talked to a cute guy just this morning. When you ran back to get your project, he was standing at the stop sign and I was very flirty."

"Really? And who was this mystery man?"

"He said his name was Ren. He's new in town. Maybe you'll get to meet him sometime."

"Sure. I can't wait," Joanne said, a heavy coating of condescension dripping off her words. Miffed as she was, Fran wasn't going to waste any more time trying to convince Joanne that she wasn't quite the prude everyone thought she was.

Middleberg Junior High was just down the street from the high school, and when they reached the flag pole it was time for the two girls to split. They said their good-byes and headed separate ways, Joanne continuing down the street and Fran heading up the main path through the front doors of the Middleberg High.

Inside, Fran grabbed her biology textbook from her locker and headed to class. There were no assigned seats, but Fran always made an effort to get to class early for a front row seat—not that anyone was ever fighting over one of those. One of her classmates, a girl named Amanda, walked in after Fran.

"Hey Fran," Amanda said, "did you hear yet?"

"Hear what?" Fran asked. Perhaps it had something to do with the sudden rise of noise outside the classroom, or the restive rumble of students as they buzzed by.

"The gym is closed today."

Fran was hit by the disturbing thought that, no matter how impossible, it might have something to do with the strange feelings that had been crowding her all morning. "Why? What happened?"

"Somebody threw roadkill in the pool."

"Ugh, roadkill?"

"Uh-huh. Coach said it looks like dogs. Three of 'em."

Fran's stomach lurched. "Dogs?"

"Yeah. Sick, huh?"

The red-haired girl was stunned into silence as the rest of her classmates filed in. The bell used to signal the beginning of a new day of learning, but today the sound of that shrill metallic clanging was like a blade of ice sliding down her spine.

_Ask not for whom the bell tolls…_

Fran tried to swallow, but her tongue was sticky and dry.

_It tolls for thee._

X X X

Larry's feet hit the rock-covered floor of the roof with a skid. The sound of laughter had vanished from the air, a long gone smoke risen into the ether. It had not been the light and squeeling laughter of a happy child. It was a harsh and abrasive caw—the percussive _HA! HA! HA! _of a teenage punk throwing rocks through a church window. It was the braying laughter of something evil.

He approached the edge of the roof with a cautious gait and a healthy dose of apprehension. The stench permeating the rooftop was something entirely different from what had previously assailed his senses. This was something not based in his world, but in the real one. As he rounded a giant aluminum vent he found the source of the offending odor. A pile of bones, sinew intact and coated with bloody fur, lay near the parapet wall, a gathering of flies now buzzing above the buffet. Upon inspection, Larry couldn't quite decide what exactly they might have belonged to. It could have been the bones of a dog, coyote, or even a large fox. They weren't human, at least, but that brought him no sense of comfort or relief.

Larry was many things, most of them closely resembling or related to childishness and immaturity, but he was not exactly dumb. Random mischief and chaos usually belonged—in his world, anyway—to a special kind of being…the worst kind.

Boogeyman.

The word turned over and over in his mind. It certain fit well enough, but something about it didn't feel right. Boogeys were troublemakers, frighteners, misfits. They weren't killers. In any case, it wasn't really any of Larry's business. Curiosity often got the best of him, but not enough to go messing around and end up tangling with a boogeyman. Some bad juju was always going down somewhere in the world, but he wasn't the imaginary sheriff of this town. He was perfectly happy to get back to his place on the rocks, waiting for the bell to let those cute honeys back out into the fresh air. With any luck, maybe he'd catch sight of that one cutie again.

And so he had decided to go about his day when the sound of the gravel rocks _click-clacking_ at his heels made his spine stiffen in fear. Suddenly he wished he had a blanket to pull over his head as he felt the strong grip of the boogeyman dig into his shoulder.


End file.
